An Unlikely Friendship Between a KKK Leader and a Black Activist

And what it teaches us about understanding.

Today’s newsletter features a story I recently encountered and which I can’t stop thinking about. It’s a story about the transformative power of understanding misunderstanding—and how understanding can connect us.

Though it took place in the 1970s, you might notice themes that resonate today. There was rampant ingroup/outgroup thinking, people who were angry and disenfranchised, and politicians taking advantage of and stoking anger for political gain.

But it’s also a story of the possibilities of friendship against all odds. It’s about how two people, no matter their differences, have the potential to become allies.

If your interest is piqued, you can check out this book, interview, documentary, and even this Hollywood movie (though the film deviates substantially from the historical facts).

Paid subscribers, don’t forget to register for the March book giveaway. Scroll all the way down to sign up!

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The long road to desegregation in Durham

Though the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 officially made racial segregation in schools unconstitutional in the United States, many communities, including Durham, North Carolina, resisted. In 1971, when the Durham federal district set forth a court-mandate for schools to comply with the desegregation law, they also awarded a grant to conduct dialogues known as “charrettes.” Such guided conversations were intended to help prevent racial tension in the schools and wider community from exploding into violence.

The collaborative process of a charrette involves key community stakeholders coming together to talk, to share concerns and desires, and ultimately, to craft resolutions. To lead the 1971 charrette, two leaders were selected to represent the most vocal communities being impacted by the court mandate. The first was a well-known and influential Durham Black activist, Ann Atwater. The second was the local Klu Klux Klan Exalted Cyclops, C.P. Ellis.

Ann and C.P. had known each other for some time, being ardent leaders standing on opposite sides of most Durham conflicts. Ann thought of C.P. as a “cracker” and, at one city meeting, had to be held back from using a knife against him. For his part, C.P. thought of Ann as the meanest Black woman he had ever met. He viciously taunted her at protests and city meetings, obstructing her efforts and trying to harm her and her community any way he could.

Given that there was no love lost between these two, neither anticipated anything resembling collaboration or connection during the charrette. They were therefore surprised to find themselves voluntarily sitting together during a late-day break on the second day.

C.P. had wandered into the auditorium and sat beside Ann. His kids on his mind, he wondered aloud how hers were doing. “You got two, don’t you?” he asked. Ann affirmed that she did, and admitted, “My youngest ain’t doing too good.” C.P. asked why and Ann paused before answering. “Don’t take this personal, C.P.,” she said, “But her teacher’s been saying her mama’s a fool to be working with a Klansman. Other kids been fighting her over it.”

C.P. gazed at Ann, dumbfounded. It was as if she had spoken his thoughts aloud. “That’s what’s happening to my kids!” he exclaimed. “But they’re teased ‘bout their daddy selling out.” Ann nodded knowingly.

“Ain’t that something,” C.P. said wonderingly. “Ain’t that something?”

As Ann and C.P. continued talking that day in the auditorium, they discovered their struggles were the same. C.P. felt something shift in his head and heart and began weeping. Ann responded instinctively, finding her own tears falling as she reached out and took his hand. There they sat, the Durham Exalted Cyclops and Durham’s most militant Black activist leader, holding hands, weeping, and comforting each other.

Understanding people’s journeys.

C.P.’s father, Paul Ellis had been a millworker, unable to make ends meet as the provider for his family. As C.P. grew into his adulthood, he found himself on the same path as his father, working hard but never able to make ends meet, trying to matter yet always on the outside. C.P. explained in a powerful interview with famed journalist Studs Terkel that his bitterness needed a place to land. When he was invited to join the Klan, he eagerly accepted.

Taking the oath to uphold the sanctity of the White race was among the most thrilling moments of C.P.’s life—to finally be a part of something, to shed the shame of poverty and be fully accepted by others was something new for him. His delight in being accepted alongside his eagerness to direct his anger towards Blacks, Jews, and Communists fueled his rapid rise through the ranks of the Klan. Before long, he became the Exalted Cyclops of the Durham chapter of the KKK.

When he was invited to participate in the charrette in 1971, C.P. was, of course, loath to collaborate with Black people (or liberals and Jews, for that matter). If C.P. had ever seen Black people as being fully human, it hadn’t been in many years. To him, Ann Atwater wasn’t a person. She was a symbol of everything he hated—the cause of his and his family’s suffering. Yet C.P. agreed to co-chair the charrette because he hoped his participation would offer a way to throw a wrench in any progress.

That fateful day in the auditorium, C.P. heard and saw Ann, as if for the first time. Ann was sharing the kinds of experiences that had characterized the most painful parts of his life. She was giving voice to experiences that reflected suffering, a struggle to fight for children she loved and a community she wanted to take care of. For the first time, C.P. saw Ann not as a reviled Black militant, but as a human struggling to pave a way forward for the people she loved.

C.P. told Studs Terkel that in that moment:

I begin to see, here we are, two people from far ends of the fence, havin’ identical problems, except hers bein’ black and me bein’ white. From that moment on, I tell ya, that gal and I worked together good. I begin to love that girl, really. (He weeps).

Photo by Osha Gray Davidson, author of “The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South”

The journey of understanding.

This moment of new understanding didn’t come out of the blue. C.P. had had many smaller revelatory moments in the lead-up to his conversation with Ann. In the months leading up to the charrette, he had already begun to wonder if the hatred that he had nourished for decades against Black people was a sham.

Not long before the charrette. C.P. had been running an errand in town and had caught sight of a councilman he had met with the night before (in secret, as it always happened). C.P. had forgotten to share something with the man, so he eagerly approached with his hand out to shake in greeting. But as the councilman recognized C.P., his face changed. So did his direction. The councilman veered away from C.P.’s outstretched hand, crossed the street, and disappeared into the crowd. C.P. stood there in surprise, replaying the scene in his mind. He felt transported back to his childhood, to the interactions with children jeering at his ill-fitting clothes, to the sense of inadequacy and ostracism that had plagued him throughout his life.

In the documentary “An Unlikely Friendship,” C.P. wonders aloud,

“How in the Hell does people get so screwed up mentally? They don’t have any evidence to some of the things that they do and some of the opinions that they make, they just have them!”

This is what the science of social understanding suggests. Many of the views we hold about ourselves, about other people, about ideologies, and about morality are not rationally based. Particularly when we find ourselves viewing others as immoral, less than, or ignorant, it’s likely that our understanding has been hijacked by many of the cognitive biases and emotional processes that color our social judgement.

On the final night of the charrette, the stakeholders had arrived at a series of sweeping changes, from textbooks to how to deal with racial violence in the schools. They had worked hard and achieved much. C.P. and Ann had a chance to offer some final words, and C.P. found himself confessing to the crowd of 300 in attendance that the charrette had transformed him.

His voice trembled as he admitted that he had thought Ann was “the meanest black woman I’d ever seen in my life.” But, he continued, “She is trying to help her people just like I’m trying to help my people.” C.P. never went back to the KKK after the charrette.

As author, Osha Gray Davidson, discusses in the journalistic account of this story, The Best of Enemies:

One way to read the story of Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis is as a testimony to the transformative power of listening. Listening is, however, only the first step. What comes next is even more difficult: reconciling the new information with what we already know, or think we do.

Our life experiences, cognitive biases, and emotions all shape how we perceive one another. And sometimes those shaping forces distort reality. It takes great curiosity, compassion, and courage to unhook from the distortions to truly see and hear the people in front of us. To connect with their humanity.

As recent data show, we are becoming less happy, and it’s likely driven by increasing divisiveness, loneliness, and fear-mongering. Efforts to understand others can offer a powerful salve. Like Ann and C.P., we can choose to turn away from hatred and dehumanization, be curious about how people arrived at beliefs we don’t understand, and courageously reach out to those we don’t agree with.

What are your thoughts on the story of Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis and its implications? Please share in the comments!